1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the field of product location assistance (PLA), and in particular to locating products in stores, businesses and/or organizations using automatic speech recognition.
2. Description of the Related Art
Traditional directory assistance services allow callers to get phone numbers and address information from their phones. Known prior art allows customers or users to access kiosks, internal phone systems, mobile text messaging, mobile internet programs and internet connected computers to access a variety of information programs using voice or text search methods to locate product inventory or product pricing from the Internet. There currently exist many phone dial-in systems that use automatic speech recognitions for customer service functions such as directory assistance systems. However, there is currently not a system or method that allows users to access the product location in a store and additional information from an automated voice based automatic speech recognition system using the user's and/or customer's personal phone devices while in the store or anywhere the user and/or customer wants to retrieve the information.
The following prior art patents represent various inventions relating to machines, systems and methods involving product locators, speech recognition for voice-based operation, and thus illustrate known voice recognition applications for use in asking for and receiving information using automatic speech recognition systems:
U.S. Pat. No. 5,111,501 describes a telephone terminal device equipped with a transmitter microphone, a receiver, a speech recognition unit that receives and recognizes speech signals from the transmitter microphone.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,222,121 describes a voice recognition dialing unit of a telephone mounted on a vehicle or similar mobile body and which allows a call to be originated with ease.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,231,670 describes a system and method for generating text from a voice input that divides the processing of each speech event into a dictation event and a text event.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,671,328 describes a method and data processing system which are disclosed for automatically creating voice processing template entries.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,850,627 describes a word recognition system which can respond to the input of a character string from a user by limiting the words it will recognize to words having a related, but not necessarily the same, string.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,092,045 describes matching unknown speech with known models to perform speech recognition.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,157,705 provides a method for controlling a server using interactive voice response system thereby requesting information stored on the server and receiving the information visual from a remote server.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,533,173 provides a product locator that is a computer mounted to a shopping cart that receives data from a second computer. It allows a customer to receive location information about products using the computer.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,807,574 creates a method and apparatus for providing personalized information content over telephones and establishes a user profile based upon unique identifying information.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,813,341 provides a voice system to locate items using a specific software module and in store internal connector locator system. The system's information can only be accessed using an internal system of portable devices, specifically short distance wireless devices. This patent does not offer a system or method for users and/or customers to use any phone and a dial in number to locate the product information from anywhere.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,016,845 provides a method of providing speech recognition resolution on an application server in a communication network includes receiving an utterance from an end-user. The method further includes performing item-matching via a search algorithm, returning items matching the utterance to the application server, and returning relevant utterance matches to the application user.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,027,987 provides a system for search results from a voice search query. The system receives a voice search query from a user, derives one or more recognition hypotheses, each being associated with a weight, from the voice search query, and constructs a weighted Boolean query using the recognition hypotheses. The system then provides the weighted Boolean query to a search system and provides the results of the search system to a user.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,082,392 relates to the management, in an interactive voice response system, of a plurality of speech technology modules. In particular it relates to an apparatus and a method for dynamically determining which of a plurality of speech technology modules to use during voice interaction between the system and a user.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,194,069 creates a system for providing access to data via a voice interface.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,343,290 concerns a method of switching from one original dialog system, to a target dialog system, whereby the language of the speech recognition and/or speech output unit, of the target dialog system can be set.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,366,668 creates a system to provide search results from a voice search query. The system receives a voice search query from a user, derives one or more recognition hypotheses, each being associated with a weight, from the voice search query, and constructs a weighted Boolean query using the recognition hypotheses. The system then provides the weighted Boolean query to a search system and provides the results of the search system to a user.
This prior art, known by the inventors, creates automatic speech recognition systems and product locators using in store communication systems, text to speech and speech to text conversions for voice and data for the purposes of locating information desired by the user. It also creates query organization for ranked responses to requests. It does not allow the user and/or customer to request specific product location information from their personal phone. It does not specifically create the systems and methods claimed in this patent.
In addition, the following patent applications propose system and methods for a voice system to process and provide information to users and or customers.
U.S. Patent Applications 20040228456 creates an item location system which relies upon voice activation and responsiveness to identify location(s) of item(s) sought by a user.
U.S. Patent Application 20050090931 creates a method for using bar code readers to establish product location directories for use in product locator systems.
U.S. Patent Application 20070038445 creates a device to improve speech recognition accuracy by utilizing an external knowledge source.
U.S. Patent Application 20070033025 creates a method of improving speech recognition includes receiving a plurality of recognized sentences from an automatic speech recognition engine.
U.S. Patent Application 20070165795 creates a system and method for providing SMS, MMS and/or WAP information to a mobile unit user in response to a request made by the user using an interactive voice response (IVR) system. This Patent Application does not provide an interactive product location assistance (PLA) system.
U.S. Patent Application 20070263796 creates a method and system to provide data to an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) System.
The inventors are also aware of recent improvements in voice recognition technologies and testing utilized recently for one of the newer free directory assistance systems. The information is covered in the white paper: “Deploying GOOG-411: Early Lessons in Data, Measurement, and Testing” by Michiel Bacchiani, Francoise Beaufays, Johan Schalkwyk, Mike Schuster, Brian Strope at Google, Inc. The system uses mapping technologies to provided directory assistance information to user of the service.
Notwithstanding the entire prior art listed, the present invention is neither taught nor rendered obvious by these patents and patent pending documents or white papers.